Page 16 of The Defiant One
"Apologies accepted." She took a deep, steadying breath and let it out on a tentative smile. "Now let's stop bickering, shall we? I want to see your laboratory. I promise I won't be bored —"
"Women never keep their promises."
— "and besides, I've never met any men of science before," she said, ignoring his gruff words and trying to force geniality from him. "Did you write the formula on that easel over there?"
"Yes," he said, shooting her a glance that said, Well, who the devil do you think wrote it?
"And did you design and build that great, complicated machine down there on the floor?"
"Yes."
"And look at all those books you have . . . They appear to be texts on science and math and alchemy . . . Do you understand them all?"
Again a look of long-suffering impatience. "I wrote several of them," he muttered, pulling one down and thrusting it into her hand while he bent over a table and began rifling through a large stack of papers. "That one's my doctoral thesis."
"What is it about?"
"What does it look like it's about?"
"It looks like it's written entirely in Latin," she said tightly, but with a cheerful smile so that he would not see how much his rudeness and sarcasm were unsettling her.
"Anyone can see that it's a treatise on the components of air."
"Anyone who's a male and thus privy to an education."
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what it implies. You men think of us as silly, frivolous creatures when you're the ones who get to go off to Eton, to Cambridge, to Oxford; you're the ones who get to do Grand Tours of Europe; you're the ones talking politics in every London coffeehouse, in every private club, in every private dining room over your brandy after sending us women away because you think such talk would overtax our frivolous little brains. How do you expect us to know Latin and understand the components of air when our education consists of learning the proper use of the fan, taking care of babies, and how to sew?"
He stared at her, his expression inscrutable. He had the most intent, focused, single-minded gaze she'd ever seen. It was almost unnerving. And it remained on her for far too long.
"Stop looking at me as though I'm some bug under a microscope," she said, feeling uncomfortable.
He finally turned away, heading across the great room. "I'll grant that men have an advantage," he said levelly, "but most of those who go up to university waste their time drinking, gambling, and whoring instead of studying."
"Did you?"
"No."
"Did you ever want to?"
"No."
"Why not?"
He shot her a quelling look from over his shoulder. "Because I found my studies and lessons far more fascinating than the juvenile pursuits that so intrigued most of the other undergraduates." He moved around a large table, Esmerelda following loyally at his side. "Besides, I am the youngest son, the one who is least likely to inherit the dukedom, the one who must therefore eke out a living by some means other than a fortunate birth. It would not have been wise to waste my education."
Well, thought Celsie, at least she'd got him talking and behaving civilly, instead of snapping out curt replies and shooting her looks of impatience.
"I hope to invent or discover something that will make me famous," he was saying, pausing at the table and one-handedly going through some papers. "Something that will benefit the world, something that will change it as we now know it before my mind —" he flushed — "that is, before I leave this earth. Only a fool would waste his time at university. I may be many things, madam, but I am not a fool."
He knelt down and, bunching the blanket in his fist at one hip, began pawing through more papers on the floor, casting some aside, tossing others recklessly over his shoulder, and treating Celsie to another view of his bare back.
"Ah. Here they are." He extracted several large, slightly crumpled sheets of vellum from the pile and put them on the table, clearing a space through the clutter with his forearm and laying the drawings out for her to see.
She moved up beside him and stared down at one of the drawings. "What is it?"
"An idea I've been working on to improve coach travel."
